Put all the reference books that normal human beings know about behind the enquiry desk; the newspapers in the room behind the enquiry desk and the reference librarian in the room behind the room behind the enquiry desk.

Have your reference space designed by a non-librarian and share it with a large comuter lab run by another department. Put your ref desk in the middle of this large space with 3 other help desks managed by IT but have the ref desk closest to the printers and the printing help desk in the far corner. Have the ref staff hand out limited use computer passes but be unable to help anyone with a computer issue. Have a sign over the IT help desk that says 'Help Desk' but does not specify that it is the IT help desk. Enjoy.

A seldom used trick is to actually staff the desk with competent reference librarians. Yes, this excludes most catalogers and aged library techs and clerks. At one library that shall remain unnamed, I once found the answer to my question in a book that was on the reference desk whilst the purported librarian was off somewhere seeking an answer to my question.

"A seldom used trick is to actually staff the desk with competent reference librarians. Yes, this excludes most catalogers and aged library techs and clerks."

As a cataloger myself - awww. That hurt my feelings. ::sniffle::

Although there are questions where I do wish I could switch places with a reference librarian at the snap of my fingers. And, no, I'm not talking about every question that's not "where the stapler/bathroom/paper clips/etc." - there are a few questions I can handle as competently as any reference librarian. Heck, if I cataloged the Answer the previous day (which has happened on occasion), I might actually do a better job. So, don't totally dismiss catalogers at the reference desk.

To add to the list of ways to increase our stats: it wouldn't be pleasant, but if there was a button at the ref desk that caused every computer to malfunction after a student had been using a MS Office product for at least 10 minutes, I think that would do it.

These are too funny! I keep the stats for our library and it's crazy the things they have us count. We finally stopped counting the number of kleenexes we passed out! I agree with the idea of showing more cleavage. This would absolutely increase numbers.

To decrease just have the reference librarian keep turning the computer screen around and saying to patron and you can find it if you just click here.....showing how to use said libraries catalog. Evidently not wanting to actually do or count anything at all that day!